The Return
Three years! I wonder if she’ll know me?
I limp a little, and I left one arm
At Petersburg; and I am grown as brown
As the plump chestnuts on my little farm:
And I’m as shaggy as the chestnut burrs—
But ripe and sweet within, and wholly hers.
The darling! how I long to see her!
My heart outruns this feeble soldier pace,
For I remember, after I had left,
A little Charlie came to take my place.
Ah! how the laughing, three-year old, brown eyes—
His mother’s eyes—will stare with pleased surprise!
Surely, they will be at the corner watching!
I sent them word that I should come to-night:
The birds all know it, for they crowd around,
Twittering their welcome with a wild delight;
And that old robin, with a halting wing—
I saved her life, three years ago last spring.
Three years! perhaps I am but dreaming!
For, like the pilgrim of the long ago,
I’ve tugged, a weary burden at my back,
Through summer’s heat and winter’s blinding snow;
Till now, I reach my home, my darling’s breast,
There I can roll my burden off, and rest.
When morning came, the early rising sun
Laid his light fingers on a soldier sleeping—
Where a soft covering of bright green grass
Over two mounds was lightly creeping;
But waked him not: his was the rest eternal,
Where the brown eyes reflected love supernal.